All elements of design – from typography to iconography – relate to the overall composition. Each full webpage offers an intimate feeling to visitors before they even notice smaller details. In this way, compositional design techniques are some of the most important things to learn regarding web design. To internalize composition, you’ll need to practice. A […]

Digital interface design follows many of the same rules as print design. Composition refers to the overall layout and white space plays a big role. Many things help to define a composition, but white space is one of the most important concepts to understand.

Learning to use white space is more about hands-on practice and experience. But you can absorb plenty of great ideas by studying how other websites are put together. I've organized some tips and general ideas to clarify the overall picture of white space and how it defines composition for website layouts...

The freelance designer has a job that many people envy. Being able to work from home or anywhere with an internet connection, having flexibility with working hours, avoiding a rush hour commute, and being able to wear whatever you want to work are some serious perks. However, working independently and working from home brings plenty of challenges as well. One of those challenges is procrastination.

In a typical job, you would have a boss that has a big influence on how you use your time and what you focus on. But when you are working on your own, it is up to you to stay on task, and procrastination can easily set in.

Sure, you have clients that you answer to, but they aren't looking over your shoulder or able to see what you do with your time throughout the day. Without some discipline and a few tricks to beat procrastination, you can easily wind up missing deadlines and letting projects drag on for too long.

If you want to work more efficiently, get projects done faster, beat procrastination, and be more profitable, here are 9 tips to make it happen...

Web designers have taken on many more roles in just the past few years. It's now quite common to find designers who also specialize in frontend development, UX design, and even some backend development. One of the newest trends of responsive design is crafting a single base of HTML/CSS code which can fit properly into any browser window.

There is an intricate balance between desktop and mobile web browsers. Now more than ever it's crucial that web designers find a balance for all users in every major website. Responsive web design is more than just supporting mobile devices - It's truly about creating flexible layouts with page elements that can shift and rearrange themselves according to the current viewport.

In this post I'll explore some responsive web design ideas to help get your creative juices flowing and hopefully leave you feeling ready to make some changes to your sites if needed...

As an agency owner, I often receive questions about our client and web project on-boarding process. When a lead comes in, what are the right interview questions to ask potential clients before accepting a job?

From a client's perspective, I've noticed that asking technical or design-oriented questions causes more problems than not, and of course, we aren't just hired hands. When a potential client contacts you, consider yourself a business consultant and approach their project as a solution to a problem they current have–not someone who takes the exact need of the client and blindly builds it on command.

To understand a potential client, you have to understand their problem. This is by far the biggest question you will be trying to solve in the discovery phase. After determining their problem, you must explore the scope, cost, and timeline of the project. You'll notice most of these questions revolve around the project management concept of the triple constraint. Let's dive in!...

One of the most common fights my husband and I had in the beginning of our marriage involved getting tasks done. Whether it was as small as carrying in groceries or as big a task as moving, he always wanted to take time to figure out the most efficient way to get the job done, while I just wanted to hit it head on and get it done without wasting any more time. After all, on smaller tasks, I often had it done by the time he had come up with a plan. On the other hand, he ended up saving us a lot of time and energy with the methods he'd develop for the bigger tasks.

We both finally came to see that one-time, small tasks were easier to do my way - just get 'em done. But for large tasks, I now wait for him to come up with a plan-of-action before getting started. And I've also realized that these principles apply to freelance work - for writers, graphic designers, web developers, or really anyone who works for him or herself. Some one-time tasks are simply easier to just get done. But those tasks that you will do over and over again, you can definitely come up with a plan and use the right resources for Designers to work smarter, not harder...

In a way, each one of us is creative, and many of us are fortunate enough to be able to have creative careers as well. We are writers, designers, programmers, and creative tactical workers, and we chose the careers we did because we grew attached to the particular form of creative work we discovered.

Now, if only we could be creative — and genuinely enjoy that creativity — all the time. That creative focus we get now and then doesn’t last forever, and it most certainly doesn’t have an ‘on’ switch. All creative jobs, even those that we are passionate about, eventually end up becoming boring.

So how can we continue to stay engaged in our work? How can we reignite that creative spark we miss when we’re feeling discontent?

Much like building a website, mobile app design is a very detailed procedure. Although it may not be sociological rocket surgery(some might say otherwise) but even the best app designers will spend years studying the craft and still have a lot to learn. One of the earlier stages in both website & mobile app design is called wireframing.

This is a bare-bones template of the layout which includes the most important page elements. Content should be kept to a minimum used sparingly on an as-needed basis. Wireframing pushes a direct focus onto the experience - basically how a user will interact with the application. Many designers prefer to draw these by hand but there's always an option to design wireframes using graphics software.

In this post I'd like to offer an introductory guide to wireframing for iOS apps, and specifically how this can be accomplished using Adobe Photoshop. Other programs like GIMP or Sketch also work just fine. The goal would be to create a layered wireframe which can be edited and rearranged to fit a working mobile app prototype.

More and more people across the world are using their mobile devices to access digital content. According to eMarketer, mobile phone use will grow from 61.1% to 69.4% worldwide. The same article also claims that nearly one-fourth of the global population use a smartphone monthly, but by 2017, this number will increase to 50%.

American cell phone use has already surpassed the global numbers. The Pew Internet Research discovered that as of 2014, 90% of American adults own a cell phone, and 58% of those cell phone owners have a smartphone. Interestly enough, though, America only ranked number 13 in the 2013 list of countries with highest smartphone penetration. The top 5 in the list were United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Norway, respectively:

How did you miss it? The client's name is misspelled on the design you turned in. How embarrassing.

You spend a lot of time your designs. As a result, your designs look great. And your clients love them.

There's something they won't love, though. That's an editing goof. Yet, probably because they're not focused on words, many designers overlook the importance of editing the copy that goes with their design.